Thieves In Paradise

by Bernadette Gardner

  A cold tingle swept through Charity's body at the word conceived. She couldn't afford a new contraceptive patch this quarter. It was first on her list of priorities after her payoff for the selenite, but in the meantime she'd been resigned to temporary celibacy.

  As if he'd read her thoughts, A'Kosu dismissed her with a quick wave. “I doubt we're compatible. Antareans are too far removed from the original human gene pool for crossbreeding to occur."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "Reasonably."

  "Oh. Great."

  "You should have thought about that before you seduced me."

  Charity opened her mouth to protest his chauvinistic remark, but the very faint smile on his lips stopped her. There it was again, that barely perceptible hint of humor showing through his otherwise impenetrable armor.

  It was going to be a long four days.

  * * * *

  Kol employed every mental technique he'd learned from the A'Kosu elders to put the disturbing incident in the shuttle out of his mind.

  Nothing worked. Images of the female on her hands and knees before him crowded out thoughts of survival. Memories of the scent of her, the texture of her skin and her appreciative moans of pleasure plagued him during their trek through the moonlit forest. A few paces ahead of him, loaded down with a third of their supplies, she walked in silence. He wondered if she was also having trouble keeping her thoughts under control.

  When they'd put about half a kilometer between them and the shuttle, Kol halted her with a sharp command. He disliked setting up camp so far from the coordinates of the shuttle's locator beacon, but the carnivores would very likely return to the site looking for food. He'd left some open rations there to attract smaller animals, hoping the large predators would lose interest in humans if they found easier prey readily available.

  He'd also opened a bottle of disinfectant from the medical kit and sprayed the contents at various intervals along their trail to confuse their scent. With their pheromones ripe after the ... incident ... he didn't want the big cats to be able to track them everywhere they went.

  The idea of bathing actually did have merit, but so far they hadn't come across a source of fresh water, and that worried him. The four liters they carried with them would not last long.

  "You want to stop here?” Fatigue showed in the prisoner's eyes and in her stance when she turned to look at him.

  "What's wrong with here?” The spot he'd chosen was dry, defensible and seemed devoid of any nests or burrows.

  "Nothing. Here is perfect.” She dropped the sacks and cases he'd given her to carry and sank to the ground as if her bones had dissolved. “I need to sleep."

  "Not until we set up camp. You can sleep at dawn when the predators are less likely to be hunting."

  She glared at him. “I'm a prisoner, remember? Won't I be less likely to escape if I'm asleep?"

  He handed her the water bottles and a container of ration bars. “Find a secure place to store our food. Then you can sleep."

  "You're a cruel man, A'Kosu. Very cruel.” Despite some minor grumbling under her breath, she obeyed. Satisfied with his leadership skills, Kol stalked away and began setting up a fire pit.

  If his last vision ever came to pass, he thought, he would certainly understand the true meaning of her words. She might dislike him now, but in time she would grow to despise him. The thought chilled him.

  He had to find a way to change their fate, but short of leaving her to die here on Lebron, he had no idea how to do that.

  * * * *

  The rain of pollen continued in earnest at sunrise. Charity watched the golden dust settle all around their makeshift camp and wondered if the hitch in her breath every time she glanced in A'Kosu's direction might merely be the onset of an asthma attack. She hoped that was the case.

  She'd rather die than develop a crush on the bounty hunter. Of all people, why did he have to turn her on so?

  She permitted herself another reluctant glance at his sleeping form. He probably assumed she'd be too tired to run at this point, and he'd be right. The irony of the situation annoyed her. While her captor slept, she could have strolled into the forest never to be seen again, except that he'd cleverly fashioned a pillow from a thermal blanket wrapped around his pack, into which he'd placed the sack of selenite crystals along with her communicator and her stunner. It couldn't be very comfortable, but it was certainly an effective deterrent to her attempting escape.

  Left with little to do, she passed the time by plucking burrs from her flight jacket and pants and picking patches of dried mud off her shirt. When that task became boring, she decided to explore.

  If she couldn't run away yet, at least she could learn the lay of the land in case the opportunity presented itself.

  "I'll just be taking a little walk,” she whispered as she tiptoed past his bedroll. If he interrogated her later, she could truthfully say she'd told him where she was going and he hadn't objected.

  She sniffed the breeze for essence of carnivore and moved slowly, listening for movement in the trees which seemed to stretch on forever. The closely spaced trunks covered a series of ridges that had likely been underwater valleys millions of years ago during the planet's youth. Despite the height of the sun, the shadows grew deeper the farther she ranged from camp. The leaves above seemed greener and more lush than they had yesterday, no doubt due to the drenching storm.

  She'd just found a bent tree suitable for climbing when his voice reached her. Damn. Why hadn't he slept a little longer?

  His angry yelp galvanized her and rather than head back to camp, something primal took over at the thought of being pursued. Her heart hammered and panic drove her through the trails between the trees. Her logical brain told her to stop, but a deeper part of her psyche that had been trained early on to avoid punishment at all costs wouldn't let her. Drawing in huge gasps of the humid air, she ran for her life.

  * * * *

  Once again, Kol's vision came to pass. He flung himself through the forest, racing after the prisoner's barely concealed trail.

  Oddly, his concern was for her safety rather than his mission. He'd seen her foot slip in his vision and he'd watched her tumble into a deep ravine. The fall would no doubt injure her severely.

  His heart thundered and blood pounded in his ears. Why hadn't his damned vision shown him the outcome of her escape attempt?

  "Prisoner!” How foolish to expect her to answer. He tried again, though her proper name seemed foreign to his lips. “Charity Foster, do not run from me!"

  The snap of a branch, the clatter of pebbles against stones, drew him off the main trail. Yesterday's deluge had created a perfect path of smooth soil amid the trees. Of course she'd veered from this natural trail into rockier areas where he had to slow his pace.

  Her footprints led towards the ravine, closer and closer to disaster.

  Kol ignored the fatigue that tightened his thigh muscles and cramped his back. The thick pollen made breathing difficult, slowing his progress. Finally he stopped and doubled over, gulping the warm air. “Charity! Stop now before you injure yourself."

  Just as he remembered from his vision, her sharp scream tore through the relative quiet of the morning. Now able to pinpoint her location, he ran again.

  "Charity Foster, where are you? Can you hear me?” What would he do if she were hurt? Kol was no sadist. He enforced the law, often on planets where there was no other authority but the highest bidder for his services, but he never reveled in the pain or the plight of his targets. The thought that he might have to watch the female suffer, curdled his stomach. “Please answer me!"

  "Here! I'm here.” Her response drifted on the hot breeze, faint and small. At least she had the sense to call out to him. He headed for the ravine, vaulting among the trees, unconcerned for the moment by how far they'd ranged from the shuttle's locator beacon.

  "Where are you? Are you hurt?"

  "Come look.” Her voice grew stronger, and that gave Kol hope that
she hadn't been injured.

  He burst from the tree line and caught himself one step short of the edge of the ravine. Beyond the newly formed canopy of leaves, Lebron's orange sun lit the landscape a coppery gold. The broken earth looked like a wound, a bloody gash between two ridges of pristine forest. At the bottom stood Charity Foster, waist deep in a shimmering freshwater lake.

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  CHAPTER 6

  Charity smiled when A'Kosu appeared at the top of the ravine. For some reason, her irrational fear of being captured again disappeared the moment she'd tumbled over the crumbling rim of earth. During her descent down the muddy slope, her only thought had been that she didn't want to die on this goddess-forsaken planet with only a stoic Antarean bounty hunter to mourn her passing.

  "Look what I found,” she said, splashing shimmering arcs of water over her head. The lake wasn't deep, but the water was cold and fresh. There'd be plenty to bathe in and to drink.

  "Don't you mean, ‘look what I fell into'?” He shook his head, seemingly bemused and exasperated. “Are you injured?"

  "No. I'm fine.” She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let her body ease back into the water, arms outstretched. Heaven. Funny how a day and a half wearing dried mud had cured her newfound disdain for large amounts of water. She reveled in the sensation of the gentle waves loosening the dirt from her hair and her skin.

  After a moment, she opened one eye and searched the slope of the ravine. A'Kosu had worked his way about halfway down to the water line. “What are you waiting for? You need a bath as much as I do."

  With far more grace than she would have expected from someone of his size, from where he stood he executed a long, shallow dive into the water and headed toward her with swift, powerful strokes.

  Anticipation fluttered in her stomach, battling with the desire to tease him and swim away so he'd have to pursue her. Had she gone mad? Wet and panting, he looked delicious parting the water with his muscular arms. The desire to flee gave way to a bone deep need to surrender to him. She thought of the carnivores and their uninhibited coupling and instinctively widened her stance, meeting his gaze when he reached her.

  Rather than anger, his light blue eyes burned with lust. Charity's clit pulsed in response when he snaked an arm around her waist.

  He didn't speak, merely pulled her trembling body against his and bent his head to suckle cool drops of water from her throat. Beneath the surface of the water, his legs tangled with hers and he teased her left nipple to attention with the rough pad of his thumb.

  "I want you now.” He whispered the words against the smooth skin under her ear and punctuated his demand by pressing her hips against his.

  Charity nodded. The urge to be fucked had come over her like a wave the moment he touched her. She'd have obeyed any request at this point, done anything to have him inside her again. With little prompting, she wrapped her arms around his neck and mounted him, desperate to feel the rigid heat of his erection between her legs. He turned with her in his arms and while he burrowed his big hands under her damp shirt, he walked her toward the lakeshore.

  He had her on her back in the firm sand a second later and tore her wet clothes away, exposing her body to the scorching heat of his gaze as well as the bronze light of the still-rising sun.

  Naked now, she spread her legs for him, a wicked invitation, made with abandon. Coherent thought fled and she became nothing more than an instrument of pleasure, seeking, demanding to be used for one purpose only.

  Wasting no time on unnecessary foreplay, A'Kosu stripped away his own clothes and fell upon her. Charity squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lower lip against the shock of his first rough thrust. Every sensation was in contrast—the warm, semi-hard sand beneath her back cushioned her, while above her and inside her his body was hard as steel, rigid and unyielding. The faint breeze dried the water on her skin causing an all over chill, matched against the heat of a rising orgasm that built within her.

  She clung to him, absorbing each impact of his body against hers until the inner wave broke. The tremors ravaged her and involuntarily her body arched, rising to meet him. “More,” she pleaded. “Do it to me again."

  He obliged by fingering her clit while he continued to pump. The combined pressure of his large fingers against her sensitive flesh and his huge cock laving her inner walls set her off again. This time she screamed when her body convulsed, every nerve ending raw with the power of it.

  A moment later, his own climax sent a rush of liquid heat through her, melting her, finishing her completely. Weakened to the point of exhaustion, she lay beneath him, eyes closed, imaging herself sinking into the earth and becoming one with the planet itself.

  A'Kosu held his position above her a moment longer, until the last of his seed trickled onto the sand, then he collapsed beside her, drawing great breaths of the humid air. Finally he rolled over onto his back and shielded his eyes with his forearm. “I hadn't planned that."

  Charity mustered the strength to turn her head in his direction. He looked like a mountain range, all craggy peaks and deep valleys, and his pale eyes reminded her of the icy lakes of upper Celrax.

  "If you do that well spontaneously, imagine what you could accomplish if you set out to seduce someone."

  "That was no seduction.” His voice was low but firm.

  "No?” Charity stretched her limbs, enjoying the loose feel of her muscles. She fought to keep her eyes open.

  "No. It was a response to the pollen. Just like last night. It seems we breathe it in and once our systems are saturated, we have a sexual response. I think water intensifies the effect."

  Despite her exhaustion, Charity drew herself up on her elbows and crossed her ankles. “That's your theory?"

  "It makes sense. It's an entirely involuntary chemical response."

  "Involuntarily. So ‘I want you now’ just came out of your mouth of its own accord?"

  A'Kosu raised a brow. “I suppose it did. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we should get back to camp. We need to find something to carry water back—"

  Charity bolted upright and glared down at her naked companion. “Gotten it out of the way?"

  He sat up also, reaching for his wet, discarded clothing. “It may not be something we can avoid in the future, but it certainly isn't something we should dwell on."

  "I have no intention of dwelling on it. And I don't want to continue being the object of your sexual"—she floundered for the right words—loss of control."

  His neutral expression infuriated her. “I doubt you'll object if the urge strikes us again. We both seem unable to resist it."

  She rose now, making certain to kick a little sand in his direction when she turned on her heel and strolled down the shore. She didn't get far before she realized if she wanted to get her clothes back on, she had to go in the other direction.

  Half dressed now, his damp shirt hanging from his hand, A'Kosu looked like a bronzed warrior statue in the orange light. Even without her lungs full of sex-inducing pollen at the moment, Charity had to admit he was hard to resist. Sated as she was, her body responded to him, and that only made her more angry at herself. “I do intend to object. In fact, I refuse to participate in any more unbridled ... fornication with you."

  "And how do you plan to control yourself? The urge was so strong, you forfeited your chance to escape. I might not have found you if you hadn't called out to me."

  "I wasn't trying to escape."

  He squinted at her, obviously perplexed. “Then why did you run from me?"

  She bent to retrieve her clothes, refusing to look at him while she explained. “It's just instinct. My earliest memories are of running from authority. My mother was a Reiki healer. She practiced her craft long after it was banned on Celrax during the Dedicant uprising. Because physical contact between the sexes was prohibited except during sanctioned procreation, she was persecuted relentlessly as a heretic. I can't count how many times we'd have to pick up and leave o
ur home in the middle of the night to escape the Dedicant patrols. When I'm being pursued, the fear I remember from those times just takes over."

  There. She'd confessed the shame she'd borne since childhood. The daughter of a heretic could expect no better life on Celrax than that of a fugitive. She expected no sympathy from A'Kosu and she got none. He merely grunted acknowledgement and stalked away, shrugging into his wet shirt as he walked.

  * * * *

  Kol ignored the pang of regret that tightened his chest at the prisoner's story. He'd grown used to hearing lies and excuses from his targets, and this had been the truth. The strength of her voice, the undertone of deep sadness touched him, but he didn't dare admit it.

  He climbed the ravine slope and offered his hand to help her up beside him. The touch set his already raw nerves jangling with the uncharacteristic desire to take her in his arms again. If nothing else, she was right about one thing. They had to find a way to fight the strange effects of the pollen. If they continued to behave like rutting animals, they risked too much—the outside chance he might seed her womb, and the very real possibility that a mating bond would form, making it impossible for him to turn her over to Gar Gremin. That would lead them directly to the circumstances he saw in his damnable vision.

  "The gem sack is waterproof,” he said, forcing his concerns out of his mind once again. “And if we put all the rations in one container, we can use—"

  "Why don't we just move our camp to the lake shore?"

  He spared her a glance over his shoulder. Clean now, her skin glowing in the coppery light, she was ... stunning. He hadn't noticed the almond shape of her eyes before, or the graceful planes of her face. His hands ached with the memory of touching her, of molding her hips and feeling her sex pulse around his and his breath caught. “We will ... be too far away from the locator beacon of the shuttle. Our rescue ship might not find us."